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Linux has come a
long way over the last year in its ability to provide desktop software required
to run an office. We set out below our experience of some of the software that
resolves many of the problems that have been identified in the Linux community,
and we believe now provides a full alternative to the Windows environment for
those whose requirements match ours.
Word
processor
One key requirement of word processors is the ability to read
and write documents in Microsoft Word. It should be remembered that Microsoft
no longer has a "standard" format. If you have a circulation list of more than
10 people, it is unlikely that every person will be able to read a Microsoft
format attachment, even if every user has Microsoft
 Within that constraint, Abiword (click the image to
go to their site) is the free word processor that should provide almost all needs.
The software is absolutely great for most needs. For the 10% or so of users
who require advanced formatting or advanced features such as including images
and page numbering, the software is not really up to the job.
One tip for the Brits - to get the
dictionary to use UK spellings, you need to copy a file "british.hash" to the
dictionary directory (in our case it was /usr/share/AbiSuite/dictionary). We
found "british.hash" somewhere on our system installed by another package, but
it is within our "download" section if you can't find your own.
 For users requiring more sophisticated
word processors, the commercial TextMaker is a wonderful piece
of software, with a cost somewhere around £40 ($60, €60). We
have yet to find something it is unable to handle.
For word
processing that does not require formatting, check out Kate. It really works
very well, with syntax highlighting, because it allows you to have multiple
documents all open at the same time.
There is also the suite of programs
from OpenOffice.org. It is a huge download, took too long for us to fire up each
time we wanted to use it, it uses a particularly ugly rendering techniques
which makes document layout formatting difficult to "see" on screen and created
its own "desktop" which ran on top of our own desktop, and seemed to make it
very difficult to just get on and use the software. However, all the nags are
purely cosmetic. If you have serious need for a serious Word Processor which
links to just about every other "office" type program, and you are less
impatient than we are, you really should consider this software from openoffice.org.
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Spreadsheet
For spreadsheet software that reads
Excel, use Gnumeric. We use version 0.7. A later version is 1.0.4. We read that
gnumeric was "bash tested" for over a year before the authors would accept the
first full version number of 1. If so, it is probably now more robust that
Excel itself.
 Our experience is based on the earlier version.
Click on the image to go to the gnumeric web site. (We have not yet upgraded
because there were too many dependency files that we had to upgrade, and we did
not have need of any advancement from the version we use.) The software is
entirely robust, and reads Excel documents. It saves documents only as Excel
95. If there are more than 3 worksheets, we had problems opening (and saving) a
gnumeric spreadsheet.
The range of functions is staggering, and the
commands are so Excel-like, that an Excel user should need no training
whatsoever to use gnumeric.
The comments on Star Office in the Word
Processing section above apply equally to Spreadsheets.
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Database
We use databases extensively in our own
internet and office programs. So our experience is limited to the heavy duty
client-server databases. Neither is trivial to set up, but both are very simple
to use once set up properly.
The two programs we use are Interbase and
MySQL. Set out below are the circumstances we use each.
The big deal
with databases is that you will want to use them . This means that wherever you
want to run them, you need software that can handle them. MySQL is supported
just about everywhere. Interbase is not. That means you are likely to use MySQL
anywhere that you do not need features that are in Interbase and not
MySQL.
MySQL does just about everything we want. It has great
documentation and is fast and robust. The downside of MySQL is that it lacks
some advanced database features. For us, the most glaring deficiency is Stored
Procedures. MySQL authors have a clear development plan, and all the advanced
features that we require look as if they will be available within the next year
or so.
In the meantime, Interbase (or Firebird, the open source version,
found at www.ibphoenix.com) is available
as free-ware. In our view, both are dreadfully badly documented (or at least
they were the last time we looked). The documentation was so poor that we wrote
an eBook ourselves on using Interbase with Delphi (see
www.eBooks.uk.net for details). You will
find it difficult to load (because there is nothing to tell you simply what to
do, not because there is anything inherently difficult in the process), and
frustrating to get going. Once you have cracked it, the whole process and
operation is very simple. And Interbase really is a great database
handler.
For the simpler "no frills" database equivalent to Access,
check out the Star Office offering. See comments in the Word Processing section
that apply equally to the database.
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Presentation
We have not used a
Linux equivalent to Microsoft Powerpoint. Although we did not use it even on
the Windows environment.
Instead, we present using html and browsers. We
are proficient, and the amount of time taken to get a professional appearance
is not significantly reduced (when you take account the time involved in
collating the content itself) with presentation software.
OpenOffice
have their own presentation software which looked quite superb when we played
with it. But we have not had the need to use it in practice, because we are
able to use "html" presentations that meet all our needs.
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Image manipulation
With a significant amount of our time taken putting
together web sites, image manipulation is very important to us.
 The Gimp does just about everything we could ever
hope for - and more. (Click on the image for the Gimp web site.) And so well.
There is a great tutorial called "Grokking the Gimp" that is freely
available, and a very worthwhile learning tool for those who are new to image
manipulation and creating special effects.
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EMailing
EMailing is very well handled on
Linux.
 For simple emailing, we use KMail. (Click on the
image to go to the site). It is basic, which is why we like it. There is
automated saving of email address used in any email you send out, along with a
good address book. For group mailings, we had to "overload" the address book
features (ie. abuse the fields available for our own purposes), but it works
well and easily. Filed emails are a big deal, because there is always worry
about losing emails received with a crash or computer problem. The emails are
saved in a simple text file that can be read with a simple word processor. This
means backing up and retrieving emails in an emergency is trivial, even if you
do not have access to KMail for any reason.
We have recently added anti-Spam software and configured KMail to use it.
The two software we checked out are SpamAssassin and qsf. We have
put together an article explaining how to use both, and where to get them,
in Spam Filters.
For group emailing, we do
not have experience, but there are certainly many offerings. SuSE sell an email
server that looks, from the sales bumf, the business. But we have no
experience of it outselves.
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Image manipulation
Within the last few months, Linux now has an embarrassment of
serious web browsers that put Microsoft browsers to shame. One of the
many advantages of open-source is the opportunity for creativity. Linux
is developing a slew of browsers with tremendous capabilities. There is
a choice of fast and/or full-featured and/or commercial and/or
experimental.
 In our view, anyone needing to decide which
browser to use should start with Mozilla. It is the organisation that
develops the software code at the heart of many Linux browsers,
including Netscape. It is free, having evolved as true open-source software, with initial
bugs having been ironed out years ago. It does everything we want
from a browser, from routine display of web pages, to javascript, to
https encryption. We do not use the EMail system or the html rendering
tools that are included but we understand they are excellent.
 Galeon is a simple "lightweight" browser. (Click on the image for the
Galeon site). It does all the standard browsing you would expect, and it
handles Javascript almost perfectly. Plug-ins (such as Flash or Real Player)
work pretty well as expected. Galeon does not have in-build email,
which makes it a fast browser to use.
One hint for users of RealPlayer - RealPlayer uses
the "rpm" letters to identify its files. This means that you launch Real Player
which then tries to "play" any "rpm" file that you are trying to download. To
avoid the problem, instead of clicking "rpm" download references, right click on
the reference and use the "save to file" option. Galeon is another
of the Mozilla implementors.
A limitation for some users is Microsoft's new media formats for
which plug-ins are not freely available on Linux. These include,
for example, "shockwave" and "X-Director" Mime types. We did not
even realise this limitation existed until we saw a user of the
children's BBC site failing to use one of the myriad of games
available there. The solution is a supreme piece of software,
whose use goes way beyond the browser. Crossover comes either as
a plug-in for the browser, or as
stand-alone software. It allows Linux systems to run
many Windows programs directly. The software is called
"Crossover", costs between £15 and £50 ($25 - $75, €25 -
€75), and is found at
www.codeweavers.com.
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HTML Editing
 For our HTML editing, we use Quanta. It has some really great
aspects. One in particular is a great way to change the properties of tag (such
as, say, <IMG>), which takes a great deal of strain out of writing pure
html in a basic text editor. Since we write a huge amount of html documents,
into which we insert all sorts of strange programming markers, we need
an html editor that leaves html the way we wrote it. Most software, in
both Linux and Windows too, assumes you don't know what you are doing
if html is not, in its view, perfect, and corrects it for you. This is not
good for us, which is on reason that Quanta suits us wonderfully.
But Quanta is not capable of WSYWIG,meaning that you can not edit
directly an html document, displayed how you will see it in a browser.
For simple html pages, there are
simple work arounds - not least by switching between the "html editor" mode and
the "browser" mode with a single click. But for larger html pages, it becomes
very stressful (and prone to error) to try to find where you want to make
changes, when you are not able to jump immediately to where you want to go with
a simple "point and click".
Mozilla (featured in "browsers" above), has a great html editor, with all
the WYSWIG features you would expect of a great html editor. We have
a problem with it "correcting" our pages, so we are unable to use it.
Similarly, Linux is deficient of software that adds the vast amount of
html (such as rollover javascript code) that some of the more expensive
Windows html editors do). Again, for our own uses, this is an advantage,
but some html designers will find this limitation is unacceptable.
As in Windows, there are many Linux word
processors that convert formatted text to html, some with WSYWIG modes for
editing. But this concept is severely limited for all but the
simplest web pages.
We have written advanced web pages using Quanta, so it is certainly feasible. But
it takes much more time and significantly more concentration to do so, and it
requires an especially sound knowledge of html.
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Desktop Publishing
We have very limited use for Desktop Publishing. Since starting
to use Scribus, however, we have created many excellent documents,
the likes of which we had never anticipated before its use. Scribus
is a WSYWIG system that just works. There are some quirks in practice, for
which documentation would be hugely valuable, but the quality of the
software means it really is very easy to get to grips with for
users with the slightest experience with Desktop Publishing.
As best as we can judge, without having ever used it, the more
advanced features of Scribus are well documented and it looks as
if very sophisticated output is possible.
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Programming
There are a great many programming languages open to Linux users.
For better or worse, the Linux environment is very "C" and
"C++" biased.
There are many scripting languages, such as Perl
and PHP. Since almost all of our programming is aimed
at browsers, we use Python and we absolutely love programming
in this very well thought out language. In the Windows
environment, we were beset with programming issues that
had little to do with our code. Within the Linux environment,
we just do not experience inexplicable or insoluble problems.
 When we first switched from Windows to Linux, we used Kylix,
which is Borland for Linux. Kylix is a fully commercial package, although there
is a limited functionality open source program available. (Click on the image
to go to the Kylix authors, Borland, web site, where you ought to find details
of Kylix).
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